Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Scottie
My Jackie O sunglasses and oversized sun hat are ridiculous inside the lobby, but that’s the point. I’m not wearing anything baseball-related, and I have my hair tucked under my hat so not even the desk clerk will recognize me. I don’t want anyone asking questions I can’t answer.
I just want to get in the car that my app says is seven minutes away, get to the airport, and take the first flight out.
It’s easier this way.
If I’m gone, Doug doesn’t have to deal with drama, Lucas doesn’t have to risk everything he’s worked for just to defend me, and Jake doesn’t have to confront the pain of his mistakes.
By disappearing, I can carry it for everyone and fix it, at the same time.
I did the brave thing last night—scheduled the post, sent the text, told myself it was finally over—and woke up to it being the worst thing I’ve ever done.
If I’d known I’d be punished for finally putting myself first, I’m not sure I would have been able to.
It hurts so much more than never trying, because at least then, I didn’t know what I was missing.
So disappearing is just easier.
And more comfortable.
Requires the least of me.
Except …
I’m not sure it’s ever actually helped anything.
My phone’s flipped over on my lap. I could turn it over and find out how angry everyone is.
Or I could turn it over and ask someone to come find me.
I’ve never tried that.
Maybe that’s the real problem …
My thumb is already moving. I pull up my texts as the doors to the hotel slide open.
A group of guests walks in, bringing the scent of exhaust and dust with them.
I duck my head, angling my hat to cover my face and hide my phone.
The hotel security is keeping the media out, but fans and sneaky reporters have a habit of doing whatever they want.
“Richard, keep up! I know she’s here, and I’m not going to let her be alone,” a voice says.
My mom’s voice.
I’m sitting in a cushy arm chair in the lobby, and my parents have to pass me to reach the front desk. When I look up in shock, my mom must notice the movement out of the corner of her eye, because she glances over.
Stops.
She’s running for me before my mouth can even fall open.
“Scottie girl!” she says, dropping to her knees and pulling me out of my chair and into a crushing hug. “I’m so sorry.”
Her arms knock my sun hat sideways, the brim sliding down over my ear, and my sunglasses get shoved halfway up my forehead. I don’t even bother fixing them.
Because my mom is hugging me with the fierceness of a mother bear, holding me so tightly, it’s hard to breathe.
“I’m so sorry,” she’s saying. Crying. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
I’m crying, too. Shaking. “Sorry for what?” I whisper.
She doesn’t pull back to look at me. She’s holding me like she can’t risk letting go. “We should never have pushed you to do this. Jake’s reputation isn’t worth your happiness.”
Those words!
They’re words I’ve needed to hear my whole life but never let myself dream, because dreaming would hurt too much.
But they’re more than words.
Because Mom isn’t saying them over the phone.
She came in person.
She looked for me.
She found me.
I squeeze her tighter and sob against her neck. “How did you know?”
“You sent that message about wishing you’d never agreed to date Jake, and then you went silent.
And I thought—she never says things like that.
She never asks for anything.” She cries in my hair, bumping my hat off the rest of the way.
“And I went back through our thread, and I saw every time I thought you were joking with the boys, and I realized … you weren’t joking.
You were begging for a way out in the only way you knew how. But none of us heard you.”
“I didn’t let you hear me,” I sob, hiccuping. “I was so afraid no one would care that I stopped letting any of you even try.”
“We should have tried, anyway,” Mom cries loudly in my ear. “This must have hurt so much. Like we were choosing him over you, and that idea—” She hiccups another sob and clings to me harder.
I cling back.
“It killed me,” Mom weeps. “And I realized we’ve always chosen Jake. Not intentionally, but intent can only go so far. I couldn’t wait for another minute to talk to you. Your father and I booked the first red-eye to Phoenix.”
Tears stream down my face, dripping down to the carpet. “You came without me asking you to come?” And then it hits me—really hits me. She caught the flight before my post. Before any headlines. “You came because I … went silent?”
“That was enough,” she says simply. “You should never have had to ask. I hope you’ll forgive me, sweetie.”
“Me too,” Dad says, misty-eyed a few feet behind Mom.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for looking for me.”
And then I can’t say anything else.
Mom’s hand is moving in slow circles on my back, the way she used to comfort me when I was little and had a nightmare.
I didn’t know she still remembered how. I press my face harder into her shoulder and let myself be seven again.
And fifteen. And twenty-seven. I let every version of myself feel this, all at once, sobbing so hard, my whole body shakes with it.
She doesn’t tell me to stop. She doesn’t say it’s okay or you’re all right or anything that makes me think she wants this to end.
She just holds me.
“I’ve got you,” she murmurs into my hair. “I’ve got you, sweet girl.”
I don’t know how long we stay like that, the two of us on our knees on the lobby carpet, holding each other in such a dramatic and unglamorous way, but it’s long enough that the trembling slowly leaves my shoulders.
Long enough that the worst of it passes through me instead of staying lodged in my chest.
And it’s long enough for my dad to crouch down next to us, his big hand coming to rest over both of ours, not saying anything, just being there.
When I finally pull back, my face must be a spectacular mess, because my mom’s sure is. She cups my cheeks in both her hands—the same way she did when I graduated high school, when I got my first real job—and looks at me searchingly.
“There you are,” she says softly.
The tenderness in her voice wrecks me all over again, but it’s different now.
I laugh, a wet, shaky thing. “Here I am.”
Mom laughs, too, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist, and suddenly it’s almost funny, the two of us mascara-streaked and red-nosed on the floor of a hotel lobby.
“I wish I weren’t fifteen years too late,” she says.
“You’re here now.”
***
My legs have gone numb by the time a very apologetic voice interrupts us.
“Excuse me?”
I look up to see a barista in a Pinnacle Perk polo and visor. “Are you Scottie Quinn?”
“Yes?” I say, looking around to notice there are still eyes on me and my parents. Shoot. How did I forget that people would be paying extra attention to me? Is this woman even a real barista?
“Someone ordered this for you,” she says, gesturing behind her to a rolling cart I somehow missed.
It’s stacked with to-go cups—dark roast, cold brew, caramel lattes, vanilla foam, and iced drinks sweating into cardboard trays.
Steam curls up from the hot cups, and it’s only the fact that I’m a mess of tears that’s kept me from smelling the espresso and syrup that have filled the lobby.
“Oh, okay. Which one?”
“All of them.” She looks at the receipt and shows me. “See? Order says one of every flavor for Scottie Quinn.”
Mom and I look at each other.
The laugh that comes out of me is genuine—surprised and, frankly, snotty—and Mom’s face goes from bewildered to delighted in the span of a second.
“I’m not in the mood for coffee,” I say, mostly to see what she does.
Her expression shifts to naked concern. “What?”
“I’m kidding,” I say, and we both laugh the way that only happens after crying—too loud, too wild, and completely necessary. “Let’s start with this dark roast with the kick of hazelnut. Mom? Dad?”
Mom laughs in relief while Dad reaches a hand to pull us both up.
Just then, the barista’s phone rings and she pauses to answer it. I hear frantic noise on the other end of the phone but can’t make it out. “Yes, sir. Right now,” she says. “Yes. In the lobby.”
Her eyes are wide as she looks at me. “Um, he’s saying ‘Don’t let her leave.’ So...”
I sniff, confused.
Then I hear a stairwell door open at the end of the hallway.
Five seconds later, Lucas Fischer is sprinting through the lobby, shirt damp with sweat, one shoelace undone, gulping in breath like he’s just run a marathon.
When he sees me, the relief on his face could flood the Grand Canyon.
“You’re still here! I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says.
He throws his sweaty arms around me and squeezes, and the feeling that moves through me is so enormous I almost can’t hold it—because an hour ago, I didn’t think anyone was coming. And then my mom came. And now him. Both of them, in the same morning.
I feel rooted to the spot, certain in my place for the first time in as long as I can remember.
Lucas’s chest rises and falls so fast against me, I’m almost worried for him when he takes a step back and doubles over, panting. Mom and Dad have stepped back to give us room, though neither of them stops staring.
“Why have you been looking for me? Doug told us to stay apart,” I say, staring at him, dumbfounded that he’s here at all.
“Doug was wrong,” he says.
“Fischer?”
The voice is like the crack of a broken bat. Doug is walking through the sliding lobby doors, his face the exact shade of the “Firebirds Red” on Lucas’s hoodie. He’s changed out of his joggers into jeans, but somehow he looks less like a GM and more like an executioner.